Tag: Anderson Silva

Tonight, at 9:30pm EST on Fuel TV, a taped sit-down interview with UFC middleweight champion Anderson Silva will premiere. As often as we get to see the champ knock heads around inside the cage, we don’t often get longer, in-depth interviews with him, and certainly not in English.

Karyn Bryant‘s interview with Silva tonight looks to be in English and promises to be in-depth — hopefully much more so than the fun stuff shown in the teaser video above. We’re certainly not complaining any time we get to hear Anderson’s high-pitched jokes in English, however.

Silva says, without much explanation, that he’s the “black Dana White,” for one. Silva manages to get his back-handed barbs in, per usual, and it’s a good time.

“No go,” said a disappointed Silva when asked if Chael ever came by to grub up with his clan. “No go. I wait for Chael for long, long time. My wife talk to me, ‘hey, Chael no come?’ [I told her] ‘No baby. Baby, no.’”

See more of Anderson Silva’s sensitive side revealed tonight on Fuel TV.

Anderson Silva was recently fined $50,000 for missing what the UFC described as a day of media obligations in Los Angeles to promote his July UFC 162 middleweight title defense against Chris Weidman. A pissed-off Dana White said of Silva, “Everybody wants more money, more money, more money, but nobody wants to sell the fight or go out and talk to the media. Talking to the media is part of your job, whether you like it or not.”

Had Silva really turned the corner from giving his usual reluctant, terse (if occasionally clever) answers to press and gone Full Diaz — skipping media events entirely with both middle fingers in the air? According to the champ, no. Although his response to getting punished by the organization was quite Diazian. In short: Bro, Anderson totally didn’t even know about these appointments. And, besides, his job is to train and fight, not talk.

“I’ve never missed any commitment to the UFC. I would never have made the trip to Brazil if I knew I had to be in Los Angeles,” Silva said, according to a translation by Sherdog of an interview given to Brazilian outlet, Veja.

(In addition to the fine, Silva will be forced to do Thomas Gerbasi‘s job for the next month. Brutal.)

Anderson Silva was scheduled to be in Los Angeles this week for a media day promoting UFC 162. Instead, the UFC middleweight champion flew home to Brazil — a decision that landed him a $50,000 fine from the UFC. MMAJunkie broke news of the punishment yesterday evening:

Silva was scheduled to talk with a few of Los Angeles’ largest media outlets on Tuesday but ultimately skipped the session and instead flew home to his native Brazil.

“We had a full media day set up for him in Los Angeles, and he just decided he didn’t want to do it, so he’s being fined $50,000,” UFC President Dana White told USA TODAY Sports and MMAjunkie.com…

“He doesn’t like talking to the media, but it’s part of his contractual obligation,” White said. “Everybody wants more money, more money, more money, but nobody wants to sell the fight or go out and talk to the media. Talking to the media is part of your job, whether you like it or not.”

On July 6th, top-ranked UFC middleweight contender Chris Weidman will return from a year-long layoff to challenge Anderson Silva, considered by many to be the greatest mixed martial artist who’s ever lived. It goes without saying that the UFC 162 main event is the greatest test of Weidman’s career — and one that would make most middleweights more than a little nervous — but the Long Island-bred “All-American” isn’t the least bit intimidated. And he knows exactly how he’s going to steal the belt that Anderson’s held for six-and-a-half years.

CagePotato reporter Brian J. D’Souza caught up with Weidman recently at Grants MMA Gym in Toronto, and got his take on a number of interesting subjects, including his gameplan for the Spider, the rib injury that spurred his foray into MMA, his surprising contract status with the UFC, and more. Some highlights:

Why he hasn’t signed a new contract with the UFC yet: “I’m not looking to negotiate an extra couple grand right before a title fight. My goal is to be champion, and I know that’s where you get the real money. That’s where you get the ‘Anderson Silva money,’ so that’s what I’m looking to get.”

How he’ll beat Silva: “I think the biggest thing is once you get him down, to stay relaxed and not to be so tense. I think I have a pretty smooth, aggressive game, and I’m pretty relentless with my cardio, and that’s one of my things that I have most pride in. So, I feel like I’m going to have the cardio to where he’s going to break before I break. I’m going to be all over him.”

Anderson’s mind games: “One of Anderson’s Silva’s best traits in MMA is that he gets inside people’s heads. Before they even step in the cage, he has a certain mystique about him that intimidates people. He earned that over the years. But even when they get in the cage with him, he makes sure to make them feel as if he’s on a whole ‘nother level. And then he waits for them to believe him in that, and he freakin’ mentally and physically breaks them…I’m just going to be confident. I’m not going to be worried about what he’s doing, I’m worried about what I’m doing.”

It’s almost unfair to write about the light-heavyweight title fight between Jon Jones and Chael Sonnen from last night’s UFC 159 right now, since we won’t know whether or not this fight delivered what it was supposed to for a long time. I’m not writing about the way that Jon Jones effortlessly defeated Chael Sonnen; we knew Sonnen was absolutely no threat to the light-heavyweight kingpin. I’m not writing about how Jones completely ignored his vastly superior striking and ridiculous reach advantage in order defeat “the gangster from West Linn” by impersonating him; we sort-of predicted that Jones would clown his way through this fight. We knew that the main event was going to deliver a lopsided beat-down. It’s yet to be seen how – or even if – the marketability of Jon Jones will benefit as a result.

That being said, it’s hard to expect the superfight we never asked for to have much of an effect on the way that fans perceive Jones. I didn’t think it was possible to feel as apathetic about a first round knockout as I felt after last night’s main event. Judging by the comments I’ve read on our liveblog, I’m hardly alone here. When it was over, the match felt more like a bad professional wrestling storyline than a UFC pay-per-view main event, and the outcome felt just as forced.

The only thing that irks Dana White more than his fighters giving “pointless” interviews is when he misses the opportunity to exploit a grudge match between said fighters. Seriously, it keeps him up most nights and sometimes even causes fits of dizziness in the poor fellow. And unfortunately, now that the UFC has finished cashing in on their latest grudge match, there has been a void left behind in the lives of “true” MMA fans. You know, the ones who need fabricated storylines and endless trash-talk in order to find the sport exciting in the first place. People who think Brock Lesnar has obviously earned a spot in the UFC Hall of Fame, in other words.

Anderson was jogging in the company of a friend when Pelé, who was driving by the location, saw his enemy and decided to go back and confront him about stuff Anderson wrote about Pelé in his book. According to witnesses, the only reason they didn’t fight was because Anderson’s friend stopped them.

(Money. Girls. Fame. Private locker rooms that you don’t have to share with old men washing their balls. A win for Ilir on Saturday would be truly life-changing. / Photo via LoveStrandell)

First-time UFC jitters are bad enough when you’re curtain-jerking on the prelims. Can you imagine what it would be like to go from relative obscurity to UFC headliner? Well, Ilir Latifi is about to find out this Saturday, God bless him. Come to think of it, his UFC on FUEL 9 opponent Gegard Mousasi is technically in the same situation, although at least the Dreamcatcher has had the benefit of previously competing in major promotions like Strikeforce, DREAM, and PRIDE.

Latifi is a long shot in every sense of the word, but of course this is a sport where anything can happen. Plenty of fighters have found themselves at the top of the lineup for their first UFC fight and made the most of it. Others have crashed and burned in horrific fashion. So which camps will Latifi and Mousasi fall into? Read on for a brief history lesson, and let us know what you think…

- Alistair Overeem. Watching the Reem tear Brock Lesnar apart at UFC 141 validated everyone who ever thought that Lesnar was a pro-wrestling fraud, and that Overeem was the future of the heavyweight division. It hasn’t exactly workedout like that, but at the time, it looked like we were entering a new era.

Perhaps the greatest aspect of being a celebrity — you know, other than the money, women, coke parties, etc. — is the ability to profoundly impact a fan’s life with the simplest of gestures. Take UFC middleweight champion Anderson Silva, for instance, who recently surprised a twelve year-old Jiu-Jitsu practitioner and Silva megafan suffering from Epiphysiolysis (the loosening or separation, either partial or complete, of an epiphysis from the shaft of a bone) in a Brazilian hospital.

The fan’s name is Joao Pedro; he has been wheelchair bound for 9 months and has already undergone two surgeries in an attempt to combat his condition. Despite this, doctors are still unsure if he will ever walk again. However, after Joao found out that his doctor also catered to the likes of Silva and Antonio Rogerio Nogueira (who probably financed the guy’s second and third houses over the years), Pedro requested an autograph from the pound-for-pound great. Being the stand up guy that Anderson is, he decided to step it up a notch and show up in person with an armful of autographed gifts for the little dude.

Remember a few weeks ago when Georges St. Pierre’s former manager, Stephane Patry published the UFC welterweight champ’s supposed “secret plan” to retire after a fight with middleweight G.O.A.T. Anderson Silva and then St. Pierre and his head coach Firas Zahabi did a horrible job of lying and totally denied that GSP had made such a plan while focusing so intensely on his coming fight with Nick Diaz? Yeah, well, the ruse is pretty much over now.

Zahabi was on Sherdog Radio recently and spilled the beans on the record regarding tentative possibilities (I know, be still your hearts!) for St. Pierre’s career. After the champ returns from vacation, Zahabi says that the fighter, coach and management will listen to what the UFC wants and discuss their options.

According to the coach, Anderson Silva and number one welterweight contender Johny Hendricks are both possible. “I think Georges would do either fight, to be honest with you,” Zahabi told Sherdog.